Burnaby, BC - Milpitas, CA - June 14, 2012 - D-Wave Systems Inc., the world's first commercial quantum computing company, today announced that quantum computing expert Dr. Colin P. Williams has accepted a role with the company. Serving in a variety of capacities, his title will be Director, Business Development and Strategic Partnerships.

Dr. Williams authored Explorations in Quantum Computing in 1999, one of the first textbooks on the subject. "I first learned what quantum computers were from that book," said Dr. Geordie Rose, co-founder and CTO of D-Wave. "Colin got me hooked on the idea that building these machines was a social imperative - it was important and needed to be done."

Prior to joining D-Wave, Dr. Williams was Senior Research Scientist (SRS) and Program Manager for Advanced Computing Paradigms at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Earlier as an Acting Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, he taught courses on Quantum Computing and Quantum Communications, and computer-based mathematics.

Eric Ladizinsky, D-Wave co-founder and Chief Scientist, shared his own, separate connection: "In 2003, I was invited to talk at Stanford about the current state of quantum computing research. Colin knew about D-Wave and introduced me to Geordie. Without Colin, that connection might never have been made, and quantum computing would still be at the level of a handful of qubits without any idea how to scale them up to useful sizes."

Dr. Williams served as research assistant to Professor Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University. He earned his PhD in artificial intelligence from Edinburgh University, Scotland, in 1989. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematical physics from Nottingham University and a master's degree in atmospheric physics and dynamics from London University/Imperial College of Science and Technology. His primary research interests have been quantum computing, computational phase transitions, and artificial intelligence.

"This position is one I accepted after a great deal of consideration," stated Dr. Williams. "The path that D-Wave chose to build quantum computers is unconventional and brilliant. I am convinced that it is the correct approach - and the method to bring this work into the field. Customer use and developer programming are taking place now. This is far ahead of where we would be had the founders taken another path."

In addition to Explorations in Quantum Computing, Dr. Williams has several published works that include, Ultimate Zero and One: Computing at the Quantum Frontier; Mathematica: A Practical Approach (second edition); CalcLabs with Mathematica; as well as dozens of scientific papers. He was guest editor for a special issue of Artificial Intelligence Journal on the topic of computational phase transitions.

About D-Wave Systems Inc.

D-Wave was founded in 1999. With headquarters near Vancouver, Canada, its U.S. offices, as well as its superconducting chip foundry, are located in Silicon Valley. D-Wave has a blue-chip investor base including, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Harris & Harris Group, Goldman Sachs, International Investment and Underwriting, Growthworks, Kensington Partners Limited, and Business Development Bank of Canada. The company currently owns 82 granted U.S. patents and more than 100 pending patent applications worldwide. The company's scientific and engineering workforce includes 27 PhDs and 13 MScs. In 2011, the company created a dedicated applications team to put quantum computers to work solving industry-scale machine learning and optimization problems. Gartner Group analysts named D-Wave 2012 Cool Vendor in High-Performance Computing and Extreme-Low-Energy Servers.

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